Vengeance (6 page)

And then the room grew quiet. “Who’s that?” Janna asked.

We saw her legs first: skinny and tan. Next, her brown skirt; white shirt; long, straight brown hair. Brown eyes, maroon nails. “That,” I said, “is Kevin’s new girlfriend. Maya.”

“Nice skirt,” Tara said to Maya, fake smile. Like she wasn’t upset about getting dumped. Like she wasn’t terrified of being replaced by the new girl who was definitely hotter than her and didn’t even have to try. And Maya didn’t try. She knew she didn’t have to. Probably had known it forever.

She said, “Thanks,” caught Kevin’s eye, and smiled. Kevin looked past her as I heard someone else walking down the stairs.

I saw her sneakers first—with the blue stripe and the frayed laces. Then the dark jeans above them. I turned to Janna. Watched as she raised a hand in greeting, forced her mouth to grin as she held her breath.

Delaney.

“Wanna get out of here?” I asked.

“I would like nothing more,” Janna said.

I bumped Kevin’s shoulder as I passed. “It was Maya’s idea,” he mumbled.

Right. Get them in the same room. Obviously they’ll get back together. I wondered if Delaney put Maya up to it, but from the way her feet froze at the bottom of the steps, I knew she was surprised to see me here too. Her feet moved to the side as Janna and I approached the steps.

A breeze blew down the street, and Janna rubbed her hands over the goose bumps on her arms. “I never realized how cold it was until I left,” she said. But it wasn’t cold at all.

We stood on Justin’s porch, shaded by a row of evergreens on the side of his yard. The sky behind us was a heavy gray, almost black. Storms were rolling in.

“He’s dead everywhere, you know.”

“I know,” I said.

“My dad thinks that as long as we lived in a place where Carson never had a room, he never left it.”

“Hence Arizona.”

“Hence.”

“We missed you,” I said.

She pulled at a curl, stretching it down past her collarbone, and it was so achingly familiar. I could see her sitting beside Carson—always with him—doing the same. She shrugged, like she was clearing a thought. “So … are you gonna tell me what happened? Or do I have to consult the rumor mill?”

I almost told her right then. Told her how Delaney’s brain
was damaged, like the doctors said. That she could tell when someone was sick—going to die. That she knew Carson was going to die and that’s why she was driving him down the highway to her doctor. That she was trying to save him and couldn’t. That she knew when she walked into my house that my dad was sick, that he was going to die, and she said nothing. Didn’t try to save him. Didn’t even tell me. I almost told her because she would understand. She was furious with Delaney, and she would understand.

I shrugged. “Nothing to it. We’re not together.”

She tilted her head back and laughed. “I gathered. Not that I object or anything. I’m just wondering why you can’t even look at her.”

“I can look—”

The door swung open behind us and Delaney barged out, just as I was turning to look. She bumped my shoulder. Stumbled back. Looked at the ground. “Sorry,” she said as I grabbed her elbow to steady her. And then I looked away. Problem with looking at her, with being this close, is I couldn’t remember why I was angry. What I was mad about. Not till I stepped away and felt the rage clawing its way to the surface again.

Maya walked down the steps after her, not even looking in Janna’s direction. “Okay, so I’m sorry,” Maya said. “I was trying to help.”

“I need to go,” Delaney said, looking at Janna, who wasn’t saying anything.

Maya turned and finally realized they weren’t alone. She
ignored us and turned back to Delaney. “Please don’t be mad,” she said.

Delaney’s eyes grazed mine for a heartbeat as she turned away, walking toward her mom’s car. And then I felt it: the tightness in my throat, the inability to take a breath. Cold hands on my throat. Janna was saying something, but I was clawing at my neck. And for a second it had a face, the thing cutting off my air. It had gray eyes and hands of ice and a hazy cloud of mist. And it tightened those fingers while it leaned closer, like it was furious with me.
Panic
, I thought. If I gave it a name, it stopped having power. That’s what the doctor told us.
Panic
.

I took a breath.

Janna’s hands were on mine, pulling them away from my neck. “Decker?” she was yelling. She was pale, like Delaney had been in my house that day when she knew the truth and said nothing. But Janna was probably thinking of Carson.

“Something stuck in my throat,” I said. I coughed into my fist and pounded twice on my chest. “I’m gonna leave,” I said.

“God, do you ever think of anything besides her?” It reminded me of my dad telling me I was too close. Too wrapped up.

I shook my head. “Told my mom I’d meet her at her friends’ place. But you should stay. Catch up on all the gossip and stuff. I only came to say hi.”

“Okay,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Hi, then.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Senior year. Best year ever.” She twirled her finger in the air and went back into the house.

I started walking. I didn’t live too far from Justin’s—hell, I didn’t live too far from
anything
here—and it’s not like I’d never walked it before. Two miles. Maybe two and a half. Better than going back in and asking Kevin for a ride home. Having him list all the reasons I shouldn’t leave. Hearing Tara tell everyone I wasn’t speaking to Delaney.

Knowing Janna was smiling about it.

The clouds were blocking half the sky now, and by the time I made it to Main Street, the vendors were packing up and clearing out. A few kids with painted faces weaved across the deserted street, and a stack of napkins blew down the center of it, scattering in every direction. Six blocks from here to the lake, one block from the lake to home. The thunder rumbled in the distance. I wasn’t sure I’d make it before the storm.

By the time I reached the lake, the wind gave it current. The surface moved and broke and swirled. I jogged the last block home.

The key wouldn’t turn in the front door. Already unlocked. I stuck my head inside and called, “Mom?” My voice echoed through the wood-floored rooms and off the bare walls and back again. I was pretty sure I had locked the door. I looked at the tree on the side of the yard where we kept the spare key, the wind bending the branches under the dark sky. Delaney knew where we kept it, and her car was back in her driveway. But she wouldn’t. I cleared my throat. “Delaney?” I said, listening to the syllables of her name bounce back too loudly.

I walked inside and locked the front door behind me. I heard the steady drip of rain on the roof. It sounded off,
somehow. Closer. The house was in shadows, gray, like the dark clouds outside. I flipped the light switch on the wall, heard a faint buzz, a pop, then nothing. No light.

“Hello?” I called again. I took another step and heard a splash of water, like stepping into Falcon Lake. I took another step, heard another splash. Looked down. Something was moving across the floor. Like the lake was in my house, taunting me. Seeping across the hardwood, looking to claim me.

A curse. A trade. I bent over and put my hand against the floor. Cold water. What the hell? I took out my phone and shone the screen on the floor, saw the water moving across, inching farther and farther throughout the downstairs. I moved the light around, saw dark trails of water down the walls, saw it dripping from the light fixture in the center of the room.

Closing in around me.

It was coming for me.

Maybe it was coming for her, too.

I backed out of my house, raced across the yard in the rain. A bolt of lightning lit up the sky, and I pressed and pressed and repressed Delaney’s doorbell. She opened the door, freezing at the sight of me. I looked past her, at the carpet through her house. Dry. At the lights turned on. At the walls, untouched.

“Hi,” she said, like a question. One syllable, but I could hear everything inside of it.

“Something’s happening,” I said. I looked over my shoulder. I’d left the front door wide open. The rain was getting in. “My house,” I said, shaking my head. “Something’s happening to my house.”

I must’ve looked as confused as I sounded, because she didn’t ask me to explain. She put a hand on my arm as she passed, ducking her head as she raced through the rain. I almost crashed into her back as she stood, frozen, in my front entrance.

There was still water everywhere. I hadn’t imagined it. Seeping up, dripping down—it was real. It was happening. “Do you hear that?” she asked.

I heard rain. I heard water.

She ran to the kitchen, where the faucet was turned on high. Water ran over the basin, onto the counters, down the cabinets, onto the floor. She pulled out two dish towels that had been stuffed into the drain, and we heard the water gurgle down. She looked at the walls. The light fixture. The rain coming in.

“The bathtub,” she said, her voice wavering, just like my breathing.

I followed her as she raced up the steps; they creaked—they
gave
—unnaturally. There was water everywhere, a thin coating over the wood floor. And there was more coming. She raced to my bathroom, and I went to my parents’ room. My
mom’s
room. The bathtub was plugged, and the drain near the top was stopped up with a towel, and water was pouring out. I turned the handles. Delaney must’ve turned the ones in my bathroom. All I heard was the rain on the roof. The thunder, coming closer. Then I heard her steps coming closer, splashing through the water.

“It’s not safe,” she said. “The electricity. The water …”

I followed her down the stairs. Slipped on the third step from the bottom, collided into her, knocked her to the floor. “Shit,” I said. “Sorry.” I held my hand out to her, and in the dark, she took it. “I didn’t mean …”

“I
know
,” she said. Her clothes were wet, like they had been that day in the lake. I could tell her eyes were wide, even in the dark. She looked around my house, at all of it, one last time, and backed out the front door. “Call your mom. I’m going to call the police.” I followed her out of the house, stood on the porch, watching her walk away.

“I—” A bolt of lightning lit the dark sky. We looked up, both of us, as the thunder rattled the air.

I waited for lightning to strike. It felt like something that would logically happen right now. My house was flooded. Nothing made sense.

I reached into my pocket for my phone, scrolled to my mom’s number. Couldn’t press the button to make a call. Couldn’t tell her what else was lost.

Delaney shivered and ran across our yards. She disappeared inside for just a moment but came back to the open doorway with her phone pressed to her ear while I was still staring at mine. I watched her profile as she stood in her doorway, like she was waiting for me. She fell through the ice and almost died. I took her back from the lake and here she was, perfect. Like in order to keep her here, breathing, perfect and living, the world around us had to die.

Seizing on the side of the road.

Drowning in the middle of Falcon Lake.

That a heart had to stop, and the water was here to remind me. Carson was soaking when they brought him to the hospital. Like he had drowned in her place. The lake had taken Troy.

We took something from the lake, and it took something from us. It was coming for us all.

Janna’s brother.

My father.

I stared at Delaney, standing under the light on her front porch, untouched, under the darkening sky.

And I believed.

Chapter 4

“No,” I said.

We were sitting in Delaney’s kitchen, and I’m sure they could all hear us through the thin swinging door to
the living room, but I didn’t care.

“Shh,” my mom said, because she did care. “Decker …”

“I can stay with Kevin. Or Justin.” Or a complete stranger for all I cared. Hell, I’d sleep in the back of my minivan.

“They are offering to take us in. I don’t want to stay in some hotel. Please. I don’t want us to be apart.” It was so unlike my mother to say something like that. “They’re converting the upstairs library into a spare room. And you can use the office.”

Delaney’s house had the same layout as mine. But the spare bedroom upstairs was basically just a room of books. And, true, her dad didn’t use the office downstairs much, but it didn’t have a bed. When I used to stay over, when I was younger—and then after—I’d sleep on the pull-out couch in the living room. “I don’t want to stay with her,” I said. Which was more than I’d said to my mother about the situation since it happened. She knew enough not to ask. And we had bigger things to think about.

“I know … I know you guys are fighting about something. But they’re practically family.”

I looked at the kitchen ceiling and laughed. “We’re not fighting, Mom.”

She paused. “Please, Decker. It won’t be long. You’ll have your own space. I just want to know where you are. I’ve already spoken with the insurance company. They need to assess the damage before we can start repairs. But until they tell us otherwise, it’s …” She put her fingers in the air, in makeshift quotes, and rolled her eyes. “Uninhabitable.”

Delaney’s mom knocked on the door, which caused it to open, and she gave us a pained grin and whispered, “Sorry to interrupt. The police want to speak with Decker.”

Excellent.

My mom was waiting, still leaning toward me. Asking me. I shrugged at her with one shoulder, and she mouthed,
Thank you
.

The cop was sitting on Delaney’s couch, chewing gum, hair buzzed short, watching me. Everyone was standing but him. “Your mom says your front door was unlocked when you returned home. Are you sure it was locked when you left?”

“Pretty sure,” I said. Everything that happened in the first
half of the day was kind of a blur. When Kevin came for me, I grabbed my cell and pulled the door shut behind me. …

“Yes, I’m sure.” I turned the lock and Kevin looked over his shoulder to make sure I was coming.

“And the spare key,” he said, pointing to where it sat on the coffee table, sealed in a sandwich bag. “Does anyone else know where you keep it?”